


setting the stars on fire

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [15]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Day 24, Day 26, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Lance whump, M/M, Whumptober 2020, You're Not Making Any Sense, also a request!, but pinning omg, if you thought the head trauma was bad, prerelationship, set in a nebulous time of the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27206812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: Lance could say his story started the moment he opened the force field between him and Blue;but actually. Wasn’t Pidge the trigger, when she sneaked out and he followed? Would any of this had happened this way if he hadn’t met Hunk and asked to be teamed up with him?
Relationships: Keith/Lance (Voltron), Prerelationship - Relationship
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Comments: 5
Kudos: 40
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	setting the stars on fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShiranaiAtsune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShiranaiAtsune/gifts).



> This is a special request by ShiranaiAtsune! I really hope you like it ;-;

Telling a story never meant its beginning is  _ the  _ beginning.

How many flashbacks, how many backtracks?  _ Actually, it all started here _ . Pinpointing the source of an event is an exercise in futility as tiny moments join as roots, unseen except for the ones voluntarily breaching the earth at the foot of the tree so they can be observed. 

Lance could say his story started the moment he opened the force field between him and Blue;  _ but actually _ . Wasn’t Pidge the trigger, when she sneaked out and he followed? Would any of this had happened this way if he hadn’t met Hunk and asked to be teamed up with him? 

It surely could go all the way back to his decision to enroll, because before that he desperately wished to be a space pilot, because he saw a rocket launch on TV as a kid and his big brother said, “Astronauts are the coolest.”

But stories have secrets too, hidden spaces their main characters don’t have access to. 

In his mother’s tales of gifts passed down through generations, Lance could have found such a gap if only he had been old enough to be aware of it. 

The tragedy of him might be that now, he’s not a child anymore; what he remembers of the stories, he doesn’t believe anymore.

And he’s so far away from home, when it happens.

“Lance,” Shiro’s voice is muffled inside of his helmet, “on your right.”

Lance slides his bayard slowly to the side until he spots what Shiro has seen before him; the world through a scope is both enhanced and reduced. It’s a bubble universe that contains Lance without constricting him, allowing him to slow down and center himself. 

“I see them.” Three sentries are sneaking on Pidge from behind a corner; his shots are neat even when Pidge’s voice echoes more loudly than Shiro’s in Lance’s ears.

“Cool info, dude, but who do you see exactly?”

He peaks over his rifle, frowning at her from his perch though she can’t see him. She may be able to spot Shiro, somewhere to Lance’s left, though from her comment she might not have heard him. Did he use the private coms without realizing? “I–”

“Lance!” Shiro screams, reflexively making Lance duck his head back down to look for the source of his alarm as he grimaces at the volume, “On your right!”

_ Wha _ –

Something hits Lance in the side with such unexpected force he loses his breath, skidding on the ground far enough to hit a banister a few feet away. The agony overpowers Lance’s awareness of his surroundings; he doesn’t get to see his attacker. He barely hears the call of his name, in a voice that sounds like Keith’s, before his helmet is kicked so hard his visor shatters.

And Lance’s mind shatters with it.

Lance has never been old enough to get blackout drunk, though some days he feels like Earth years are meaningless in the void of war. Waking up to sticky eyelids and a hardened brain trying to break out of his skull is a first, then. 

And he has no idea how that happened.

“Lance,” someone whispers close, “I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” he untangles his lashes with great difficulty, opens itchy eyes on the grey of his bedroom ceiling at night. His pillow dips under his head when he turns; no one’s here. He woke up in the middle of a dream then, and sleep isn’t done with him yet.

He closes his eyes again.

But an insistent shake of his shoulder jolts him awake; filling his vision is Pidge’s wide eyed face. She looks so scared he tries to reach for her like he used to with his niblings –he’s sure she’d hate the sentiment, but it doesn’t matter because he can’t move his arm. 

“Lance, listen to me,” she says, voice so shrill it drills through his pounding brain. She shifts just enough for light to set fire to his optic nerves; he shuts his eyes with a moan he barely recognizes as his own. 

Shoulder shake. “You need to stay awake, alright?” Pidge continues, a desperation in her voice that doesn’t match with the idea she likes to usually give off of herself; Lance’s heart may be up in his throat, but he needs to do something to help Pidge. 

So he swallows through the dryness of his throat to send everything back down where it belongs, and hoping he won’t throw up, he opens his eyes again. 

Pidge’s mouth is moving, but her words have decided to dance out of his reach, teasing him. 

Then Pidge blurs and slides away;  _ hah _ , Lance realizes,  _ we’re back in Red _ . He can’t see Keith from where he’s leaning on a wall, but he gets a strange sense of comfort from knowing Keith’s speed is close by.

Lance’s eyes keep slipping to the side, down, down, his head rolling to follow until it comes to a res–

Lance jolts up, agony cancelling agony at the sight of Hunk, unmoving, bleeding out alone, staring straight back at Lance. Someone is screaming over the low keening sound that fills up Lance’s awareness until he drowns in the sound, unable to breathe under the pressure of it. 

He wants to get closer, to crawl if he has to so he can clean up the blood cause Hunk hates it so much, and lie down next to him cause they promised to never leave each other in the loneliness they spent their lives fearing– something pulls at his arm, frantic, hands he tries to shake  _ can’t they see? _ he has to get over there he has to.

Pidge’s knee shuffle in his line of sight, obscuring his view of Hunk. Then her arms close around him to slow down his descent from sitting to lying down. Lance lacks strength and air to form the words to ask her why she’s doing this. Why her heart isn’t choking her like Lance’s is. 

He blinks. Everything slows down. Pidge shifts back; Hunk is...gone. No trace of him left behind.

He blinks. He can’t quite open his eyes again. “Lance!” he hears, faintly, a tie to a world too large to feel safe. Pidge is scared, and Hunk? Lance tries, but the shore they’re standing on is too far away now, and the current dragging him back too strong.

He goes under. And forgets.

Debrief waits for Lance to be out of the pod and examined thoroughly by Coran. He wishes they’d have done it without him: he’s bored, aching, and can’t contribute anyway with how little he remembers from the mission.

Hunk is sitting next to him, arms crossed on the table they decided to gather around so they could get some food into Lance at the same time. He can’t focus on Allura’s recounting of her own part of the mission with Hunk. 

All he can see is the creases on his best friend’s face, the worry that won’t leave him even when everything is over and fixed, as he’s still agonizing over what went wrong in his absence, what could have gone worse.

All Lance can feel is  _ missing him _ , so big in his chest that he has barely touched any of the food in front of him. The yearning for loved ones is a constant companion of Lance’s days and nights, but never before has he felt it while in touching distance of the person it’s aimed at. 

Hunk catches him looking; Lance averts his eyes, forces himself to take a bite that scrapes the walls of his throat going down. 

“Are you alright?” Hunk asks when they’re finally allowed to file out of the room. 

“Yeah, why?” Lance shrugs, already planning the self-care and sleep he just needs to feel better. 

“I mean…” Hunk hesitates, “you got injured pretty bad, and you looked spooked back there. Did something happen? Wanna talk about it?” He wrings his hands together a little, then drops them self-consciously when he realizes. He’s been doing that a lot, lately, and Lance is still trying to figure out whether that’s a good or a bad thing.

Instead, he shakes his head with a chuckle, “Nah, I was just bored out of my mind! Tell me you brought back something nice for me from your day off with Allura!”

“Hey!” Hunk shoves him to the side, “It was a super important mission!” His laugh is still strained, but it comes easier than it did since Lance woke up. That’s all that matters.

At the crossing of corridors leading them either to the hangars or their rooms, something purple moves in Lance’s peripheral vision. His heart stills with him before beating a quick rhythm on his ribs. But there’s nothing there.

“Lance?” Hunk calls, half turned a few steps away. 

“Yeah,” Lance rasps out, then louder, “coming!” 

“What was that?” 

“Nothing,” Lance shrugs, glances back at the empty corridor.

Nothing.

Lance studies himself in the mirror, parting his hair in search of the thin line that Coran promised would grow back. It’s well hidden under the length Lance has yet to shorten, but he still hates it. 

It’s ugly, and it’s small but has put a wild light behind Pidge’s eyes whenever she glances at him. She doesn’t do more than that lately, as if he’s a silhouette she caught from the corner of her eyes that will vanish as soon as it feels her eyes turning to it. 

Keith avoids him, too. Lance does his best to pretend it doesn’t affect him, that it’s isn’t why he can’t find sleep, why he’s walking to the training room so late without any excuses.

It’s been a game for a while now: Lance knows very well the hours Keith inhabits, uses for training. So he goes there and acts surprised to find him fighting bots when he should be asleep, justifying his own presence with the first nonsense coming to mind; Keith looks annoyed, says something just shy of offensive. Lance turns to leave but Keith stops him with an offer to train together. 

They play this like they’re simply trying to keep some flimsy peace between them, for Voltron’s sake– most of the time Lance can’t believe it’s not exactly what Keith is doing. 

But the rest of the time, Keith comes to find him in return in the middle of a movie or Lance’s beauty routine. He sits there, keeping him company in a silence that doesn’t bother Lance as much as it did when he didn’t  _ understand _ it.

And they do talk, sometimes. Secrets that waking hours dissipate until it all feels like a dream.

But right now, it’s only quiet. 

Lance walks in the training room, and Keith stands there staring at him. The only proof he’s not a statue is the sweat he swipes from his brow, the heavy pants he slowly gets under control.

There’s a contained anger in the line of his mouth, something Lance recognizes but can’t explain. Then Keith yells, the only warning he gives before lunging at Lance with a speed that leaves him no choice but to raise his bayard and block Keith’s sword. The impact echoes in his gritted teeth, his own rising anger.

But he says nothing, ducks to the side and starts the dangerous dance of two people trusting each other enough to train with real weapons but without retenue. Lance is still no match for Keith, but he gets better each time. None of them have ever spoken about this outside of these moments, not even to question why Lance’s bayard becomes a sword when they’re alone together, and only then.

With a yelp, Lance falls on his back; in his ear, Keith whispers, “Lance, I’m so sorry.” He raises his head with a question on his lips that dies when he finds Keith a few feet away. Too far for the lifeless air to have carried soft words between them. 

Keith stalks to him, an apology in the dip of his eyebrows and the reach of his hand to help Lance up. There’s a scar on his cheek, weeks old, brand new.

“You’re going to leave,” the words are punched out of Lance with such violence that he doesn’t register their meaning until Keith frowns. He shifts enough for the light to stop playing tricks on Lance’s eyes, letting the shadow of a scar disappear from his face.

“What?”

Lance opens his mouth, but he doesn’t know. He just doesn’t. It’s a certainty etched in his bones that doesn’t abate, but he can’t make himself repeat the words. He takes the offered hand, lets himself be pulled up. “Nothing,” he says, swallows the longing ready to spill into the air and harden into a proof of his feelings that he wouldn’t be able to hide anymore. 

He leaves the room without looking back.

And Keith doesn’t call his name.

“I don’t get it, man. I really don’t.” Hunk is screwing the top of some mysterious tech back in before looking at Lance, waving the screwdriver around. “You just left? Because of a  _ feeling _ ?”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Lance mutters, aware it doesn’t really make sense. He sighs, averting his eyes.

“No, I know,” Hunk says. Lance raises his head again; for a single, unbalanced second, Hunk isn’t sitting in front of him. There’s no one there. Lance catches himself on the edge of his seat as discreetly as he can, but Hunk was looking back at his project anyway. Maybe Lance should go see Coran about this, maybe yesterday’s post-pod examination missed something. 

Hunk continues, “You’re afraid that Keith doesn’t love you back, so you’re feeling like he’s going to leave.”

All considerations of injuries fly out of Lance’s head as he splutters, “W– what?” He’s taken aback by Hunk analysis, though it makes sense in a way. He mulls that over, even as he changes the subject and Hunk lets him.

He still does, when he goes back to his room, picking up his bayard for his scheduled personal training. Allura has taken to reinforce their own strengths; for Lance, she makes target practice ever more hard. 

He’s thinking about it still, as he sets up for a sniping test, wondering if he should go apologize to Keith in a roundabout way.

Then bots start popping off from all over, moving and disappearing seemingly at random, and Lance is lost in identifying a pattern to their behavior. As if they’re sensing his thoughts, they avoid getting hit; until Lance starts anticipating their reappearing. 

One, two, three, moving by increments, entire body fueling his shots. 

Four, he moves, five, again, six, agai– Keith.

Keith is in the middle of the swarm of bots, sword out, cutting them down with practiced grace. 

Lance can’t hold back his finger hitting the trigger, so instead he jerks to the side and leaves a dark mark on the far wall. He springs up, yelling, “Hey! What the hell are you–”

His shout is cut off when a kick to his knees sends him falling down his perch; he hits the ground without having seen the bot that spotted and attacked him. It’s uncomfortably familiar, and the trouble Lance has to breathe doesn’t come only from his fall. 

The lights shift and the buzzing of the bots cease. Training is over.

“What was that about, Lance?” Allura scolds him, appearing above him in worried fury. 

“But!” Lance chokes out, groaning as he rolls over and tries to sit up despite the seizing of his back muscles. He points a shaky finger...at an empty corner of the room. Where Keith was standing, a minute ago. “Where did Keith go?” 

“Keith? Must you bring him up each time you fail at something?”

That would sting if Lance wasn’t losing his mind. “N– no! I saw him, I swear I saw him!” he turns desperate eyes to Allura, begging her to do something that will make this terror stop eating him from the inside out. Whatever expression crosses his face, Allura’s answering shock means she’s taking this seriously. “I think–” Lance takes a shaky breath, unable to form sentences that make sense, “Coran needs to look.” 

But Allura gets it. With the way she softens, she gets it.

“So? What did he say?” Hunk jumps on Lance as soon as he’s out of the medbay. “Is everything alright? Is it something you ate?”

Lance glances at Hunk and considers what the question really means when Hunk is the one making the food and barely two days ago Lance got hit in the head hard enough to almost die. Unrelated things except to Hunk’s guilt.

Lance is still taking a breath to answer when the alarm starts blaring, making him look up reflexively as he starts running to his room– he skids to a stop when Hunk doesn’t follow him but instead keeps standing in place, dumbfounded. 

Right behind him, there’s a sentry– a freaking Galra sentry on the castle. 

Lance screams, “Hunk!” pointing at the sentry as he hurries back to his best friend; but Hunk glances over his shoulder and turns back to Lance with a confused gesture. The enemy has a sword, raised to kill and–

Lance collides with Hunk in a deafening silence. They don’t topple thanks to Hunk’s steadiness, and when Lance pushes himself back while keeping hold of Hunk’s arms, there’s– nothing. 

The sentry left nothing behind, as if it never was here to begin with; in the sudden absence of noise bearing on him, of a menace to counter, Lance stumbles and falls to his knees. 

The run, coupled with the mind twist, leaves Lance in a depressurized bubble: ears ringing, air sucked out of the room. 

Hunk is crouching before him, crying for help. Lance doesn’t hear people running, but feels their heavy steps in his bones. He grips Hunk’s shirt, getting his attention back. One gulp of air, “You were dead!” he sobs, tears putting a wall between him and a world that doesn’t want to make sense. He remembers, now, “The sentry on the ship, you were dead!”

A hand falls on Lance’s back, and he twitches away from it, tipping to the side. He spots Allura and Coran rushing back inside the medbay while Keith stands petrified, shaky hand hovering where Lance was a second ago.

“Please,” he asks him, because Keith is the only one that can do something, “please, they killed Hunk!”

“You’re not making any sense,” Keith answers, sharp with fear, taking a step to the side when Shiro gets here and falls besides Lance. 

“I–” Lance gasps, “I swear,” the histeria seeps inside of his lungs; he tries coughing it out. “Something is wrong,” he whines, even though Coran just assured him the sensors found nothing unusual with his brain. Coran who shoots out of the medbay again, a shiny pen between his fingers that he presses into the skin of Lance’s neck.

And then, nothing.

“Nothing shows up on the scans,” Coran explains once Lance has woken up. “I am deeply sorry,” he bows his head as if it’s his own failing and not the machines. Not Lance’s.

Lance feels so responsible for the weight on everyone’s shoulders. He can’t look at them, so instead he stares at his own vitals on the screen next to him. He can’t read them, but the ebb and flow of the line that represents his heartbeat is hypnotising. It carries him away from the shallows where his feet can still scrap at the bottom, and all that’s left is flailing to keep his head above the surface.

“Could it be some sort of weapon?” 

Lance can’t even recognize who asked, as far away as he’s gotten from the room. The question doesn’t touch him. 

His eyes jerk to a move in the corner; Pidge is slumped there, blood flowing out of her to the rhythm of her hard breathing. He can’t hear her, but she’s looking straight back at him through the cracked lenses of her glasses, wondering why he’s doing nothing. 

Lance turns back to the room. Pidge is standing right next to Keith, arms crossed to fold inside of herself, into a tiny ball that nothing could hurt. 

Lance glances at the corner– nothing there. Then finds Keith’s eyes fixated on him when he straightens up. As if he’d caught on to something that Lance himself can’t identify. 

“Could you recount everything you saw?” Allura asks, as if it could ever be useful to detail the loss of everything that matters to him. 

Lance turns to her, to Coran, to Shiro. Them, he can see them without seeing their deaths. He’s grateful for this mercy, though he’s not sure how long it will last. 

“I saw Hunk, in Red, dying,” he keeps his eyes on Shiro, because if he doesn’t he’ll drown, “and then I saw Keith leaving, and then the alarms went off and there was a sentry ready to kill Hunk in the corridor–” he stops, closes his eyes. He can’t even cry. His own tears are out of reach. 

“And?” Keith prompts him, “You saw something else right now, didn’t you?” His voice is steady, if you don’t know him enough to hear the pain. 

“Pidge, right here,” Lance whispers. He wants to fall back asleep. He wants to get away from this moment. 

“I think…” Allura says, taking a step that Lance hears echoing in the sterile room, “I think maybe Blue could help. Did you hear anything from her?”

He opens his eyes again, looks at her. He didn’t, actually, no. No panic, no warning. He wonders what that means, if he’s unravelling but his Lion doesn’t even care. Won’t she want him anymore?

That breaks the glass wall protecting him, and he crumbles inside of himself. It has been a long time, since he has let himself cry like a child; though there is no letting, he doesn’t have any choice in the wails ripped from him.

That’s when it happens. 

When delicate tendrils of a love deeper than space reach for him, finally. Unable to hold back any longer; he feels that. How Blue was trying to let things happen as they should, no matter the hurt it would cause at first, because that’s the way of Lions. But now she decides it went farther than letting Lance figure things out on his own. 

She can’t bear the loneliness in his heart.

So she takes him in her embrace. To alarmed cries, then the voice of Allura reassuring everyone that it’s alright, Lance lets himself be taken away. 

Blue will take care of him. But first, blanketed in stars, she sings him a lullaby.

Lets him rest. 

“Child,” Blue says, nudging Lance out of sleep and into not-quite wakefulness. He’s still floating in a dark void peppered with distant stars; but it’s not scary. It’s beautiful.

“What’s happening?” Lance asks without a sound, unfolding and twisting with the ease of a swimmer. 

“You were afraid.”

Lance remembers. “I was. Am I sick?”

Blue laughs, a deep chime that sounds like a song. “You are not. You needed a guide. I am sorry I did not see that sooner. I would not have let you get lost, do you trust that?”

“I do,” Lance says. “I do.” He does, down to the very cells dying and being born each second of his life. It’s himself, he doesn’t trust, never able to believe even promises wouldn’t get tired of him.

Blue hums, “They are waiting for you.” Lance doesn’t quite know if she’s talking about his family on Earth, or his family in the castle. “One is waiting for you in many other ways, too,” she laughs again, stars blinking red for a moment. “Wake up.”

“Wait!” Lance cries. “What’s happening to me?”

With a mother’s patience, she answers. “You have a gift, child. Not a curse, not an illness. If you learn to seek without expectations, the future will give itself for you.”

Lance thinks this over. One thorn of a memory, embedded in his mind since a time when he didn’t even know the meaning of words, flares up. A story his mother used to tell. “I’m a psychic?” He can’t believe that. Can he? He opens wide eyes, trying to see Blue in the myriad of stars burning so far away. “Why?”

But she’s not to be seen in front of him, for she is all around. She huffs now, “That is an answer you will have to get yourself. Wake up. They will need you.”

And Lance blinks; when he opens his eyes, it’s as if he was never anywhere else than lying in his own bed. He had one last question, for Blue. But he knows what answer he wants, so he’ll give it to himself:

If he can see the future, the visions of the last few days are not ones he wants coming true. He’ll stop it from happening. He’ll save them all.

He turns his head on his pillow. Hunk is sleeping in his desk chair, neck twisted painfully back. Lance smiles. Between the chair legs, Pidge has set three covers down and has buried herself beneath a fourth, only her hair popping out. Lance chuckles. 

But then, he freezes. Under Keith’s watchful eyes, he stops breathing. Keith is leaning on the wall, legs extended, arms crossed. Lance remembers what Blue told him.

“You’re here,” Lance whispers, more than a truth, a wish. A refusal of the future pain in his chest. 

Keith looks down, then back at Lance. “You’re awake.” His voice says he was scared. 

“I’m sorry.” It’s easier than Lance thought it would be, to say it. 

“For what?” 

Lance smiles. He has to be confident now, or risk losing Keith later on. “For making you wait.” 

Keith seems confused; that’s alright. Maybe it’s just a minute too soon for him. But Lance is willing to wait. 

He has the future on his side, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [scrollr](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com) I'd be happy to talk! I also love answering sweet comments :3


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